''Examining Newton's Law, I have come to think that the force of gravitation can weaken itself. [...] The importance of this research is obvious, and I do not think that reason for criticism can easily be found.''

Quirino Majorana, Experimental Researches on Gravitation''The modern system of astronomy is now so much received by all inquirers, and has become so essential to the earliest education, that we are not very scrupulous in examining the reasons upon which it is founded. It is now become a subject of mere curiosity to study the first writers on that subject."

David Hume, 1789

Quirino Majorana (1871 - 1957) was an Italian extremely-gifted in experimental physics. In the interwar period he initiated a series of experiments that proved the existence of gravitational shielding. Majorana's experiments were never repeated by the international scientific community. His measurements of gravitational absorption are the most careful studies on this subject that were ever made.

''Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this Agent be material or immaterial, I have left for the consideration of my readers.'' Newton, February 25, 1692/3, The Fourth Letter to Bentley

Lord Keynes was amazed by the impressive number of manuscripts on religious themes in the 1936 at an auction organized by Sotheby's. That is, for Newton the action at a distance - gravity - has a mystical explanation. Here is one of Newton's manuscripts, randomly selected:"The first part of the prophetick from the beginning of the end to the end from the beginning to the end of the Beast & Fals the lake of fire being interpretations of synchronal prophesies must be synchronized to one another. The Seventh Head of the Seventh Trumpet. That head conteins the great Apostasy & therefore tis often described.

The synchronising of these three parts is manifest, not only by their being interpretations of synchronal prophesies but also by many analogies one with another. They all begin together: for the first begins with the rise of the Beast out of the Sea & the third being a prophesy of the Whore & her Beast begins with the rise of that Beast out of the Abyss & by consequencewith the rise of the first Beast out of the sea: For the Beasts are the same as Interpreters have proved & the Abyss according to the Septuagint is the Sea. The second begins not sooner then that rise because the plague of the first Vial is inflicted on this Beast nor later least the first appearance of the seven Angels of the Vials should be later then the prophesy of the Whore & her Beast described by one of them. It begins therefore at the same time with the first & third. For it begins with the coming of these Angels out of the Temple, that is with the coming of the Church out of her place of worship upon the rise of the Apostasy. For the seven Angels are a type of the Church.

All three have one common subject throughout which is the Babylonian Beast. This Beast in the first continues 42 months & in the third he answers to those Gentiles who tread under foot the holy City those 42 months. The woman who in the first is fed in the Wilderness all this time is the Whore whom Iohn saw there in the third as shall be shewn hereafter, & the 144000 saints in the first are contemporary to this Whore & to those who commit fornication with her in the third because tis said of these saints by way of opposition of the seventh as next to come.''Yahuda Ms. 6, National Library of Israel. Full text here: http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00049

'"Le Sage's theory of gravitation has a unique place in science. It has periodically attracted some of the greatest physicists of the day, including Newton, who expressed interest in Fatio's earlier version of the theory, and later Kelvin, who attempted to modernize the theory in the late 1800's. At the same time, the theory has drawn just as many notable critics, including Euler, Maxwell and Poincare. Despite frequent and spirited obituaries, Le Sage's theory in various guises has always survived to challenge the prevailing wisdom of the day. Now, at the start of this new century, it appears that the theory may be on the rise again.

The reasons for the present resurgence of the Sage-type models of gravitation Newton's theory and (later) Einstein's relativity were essentially mathematical descriptions of the motions of bodies in gravitation. The basic idea runs like this. Space is filled with minute particles or waves of some description. A tiny fraction of the waves or particles is absorbed in this process. A single body will not move under this influence, but where two bodies will be progressively urged into the shadow of the other. If any theory of gravity can be said to satisfy Occam's Razor, it is surely Le Sage's.

Other reasons also exist for the recent upsurge of interest. It has become more common to view space once more with energy-dense fields, known as the zero-point fields, the quantum vacuum and many other names. Since the existence of these fields is the central postulate of the Sage-type theories, the status of such theories has correspondingly risen. In addition, parallel veins of research in geophysics and cosmology also seem to point to the direction of Le Sage. As Halton Arp discusses in his foreword, while the cosmological link is to alternative cosmology.'' Matthew R. Edwards, Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation (Montreal, Apeiron, 2002)

''For many years I never questioned the obvious fact that masses attracted to other (inversely as the square of their separation - to complete the mantra). The 'attraction' was so blatant that it required no thought. But then observations of galaxies and quasars forced to accept the fact that extragalactic redshifts were primarily inherent and not the result of recessional velocity in an expanding universe. How did this lead to my abandoning pulling gravity? It is interesting as the crumbling of one fundamental assumption can have reverberations in the whole underpinning of science. In this case it was the necessity to a mechanism that would explain intrinsic redshifts that eventually turned out to shake other fundamental assumptions.'' Halton Arp, The Observational Impetus for Le Sage Gravity, in Matthew R. Edwards, 2002

''In his papers Majorana provided a detailed description of his highly ingenious solutions for several experimental problems. Majorana was not a theoretician [...] He was not interested in the precise mechanism of gravitational absorption. In the absence of any theoretical frame work, he attempted to compute some of the consequences of the hypothesis and to test it by delicate experiments. In order to test his general assumption, he was tried to detect a weight of a lead ball (1 kg) when it was surrounded by 100 kg of liquid mercury." (Martins, Apeiron, 2002)

The results were surprising: indeed, the lead ball has diminished its weight.Michelson asked Majorana the compliance to repeat the experiments. Michelson never checked these experiments (maybe he did not like their consequences).

Both Quiriino Majorana and Halton Arp were banished by the 'official' scientific community. Majorana was perfidiously excluded by ignoring his experiments on gravity. Halton Arp's exclusion was in a violent way - he was simply denied the access to the Palomar Observatory.